Misadministration of medication is a significant problem where approximately 59% of all injectable errors occur at administration, and intravenous (IV) drugs account for 75% of injectable preventable adverse drug events in acute care settings. The complexity of parenteral medication administration and increased intolerance of the complications that result from improper medication delivery, create demand for devices that make drug delivery safe and efficient. Safety has been addressed in the market from many perspectives including needles, and fluid containment. A simple solution to help ensure medications are correctly delivered to patients via the parenteral route is not currently addressed.
Different size Luer connectors are passive approaches, but do not provide a unique patient-specific key. Active approaches that require information technology infrastructure such as radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and bar codes address the problem, but these active approaches require a significant investment for their implementation. Further, there is concern that due to the wide adoption of the Luer lock in many applications, drugs can be administered through improper ports. For example, anesthesia injections intended for the spine, IV injections, and gasses can all employ the same connections for delivery.
Thus, there is a need for a passive approach that provides a unique patient-specific key to prevent or reduce the improper administration of parenteral medications.